With elections upcoming in 2015 in Tanzania, Nigeria, and Burkina Faso, let us examine this issue in these three countries. The V-Dem “Other Electoral Violence” violence measures if the campaign period, election day, and post-election process was free of violence conducted by actors other than the incumbent government and its agents. Higher scores are indicative of lower levels of electoral violence.
The figure below shows that Nigeria has experienced moderate improvement since the mid-1980s but that problems with electoral violence still remain. Tanzania, which was relatively violence free in the 1970s and 1980s has seen a secular decline since then and is approaching Nigerian levels. The increased violence coincides with the liberalization of the political system in the early 1990s and the introduction of competitive elections in 1995. Burkina Faso was relatively violence free until the Burkinabé presidential election of 2010, when we see a small deterioration.